Barnyard Stories

Apart from their country of birth, noise rockers Metz don't have much in common with acts such as Metric and Tegan & Sara. Yet there they were, sharing the stage with them at the 2013 Polaris Music Prize gala award ceremony in September. And although they may have been assaulting the senses more than anyone that night, they weren't seen as outsiders. Rather, they were considered equals, with their self-titled debut recognised as one of the ten best Canadian albums from the prior 12 months.

Alex Edkins lets out a laugh at the comparisons. “Yeah, to say the least it was a surprise man. It was very overwhelming and kinda shocking so we just went with the flow with that one.”

The day Edkins talks with The Music marks a year since Metz's first full-length was released. Unsurprisingly, he recalls the time as an exciting one for the trio.

“It was one of those things, and it's happened a couple of times with this band, where it's a state of disbelief,” he admits, still sounding shocked that the band put out a debut on Sub Pop. “We found ourselves in places where we never thought we'd be and playing shows in front of people we'd never thought we'd play for, so I think that was one of those times where I was like, 'I can't believe that this is happening, that this record is actually going to come out, that it's going to go out into the world and people are going to be able to hear it'.”

Recorded mostly in a remote barn north of Toronto with Graham Walsh from Canadian electronic act Holy Fuck, the week together saw the trio “mostly just rolling tape and playing”. The end result is ten tracks of furious dirge punk, songs that don't pander to any trends, which, when balanced with spacious production, gives it all a timeless nature.

“That's the goal, to make something you can call your own, [that] hopefully doesn't date. The worst thing you can do is over-think things, so we just try and keep it as simplistic as possible, and if it has that energy, that physicality to it, we know it's a keeper.”

It has been a year of incessant touring for Metz, but Edkins assures us that work on a second record won't commence until their Australian commitments are done. Songwriting is a practice that only happens for the band at home in Canada, and when they begin in earnest next year, these experiences – right now – will all be forgotten.

“It won't come into the equation, if we can do anything about it,” confirms Edkins. “I really think that's the worst thing that can happen [so] we're just going to follow our gut. As much as this year has been wild in a lot of ways, like the Polaris and other things like that, I think we've got to just keep moving forward or else it could get ugly.”